Hot Topics:

Electronic monitoring of Colorado parolees has pitfalls

By Christopher N. OsherThe Denver Post

Posted:
06/09/2013 12:01:00 AM MDT

Updated:
10/01/2013 01:55:10 PM MDT

Kyle Kingrey, right, manufacturing supervisor at Boulder-based BI Inc., demonstrates how to put on an ankle monitoring bracelet. This ankle monitor, the BI HomeGuard 206, is a radio-frequency monitoring device similar to the one parolee Evan Ebel was wearing. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

One sex-offender parolee hooked his GPS tracking device to his dog's collar so he could consort with underage girls and collect firearms, drugs and ammunition, police say.

Another parolee disappeared from his motel the day he was tethered to an electronic monitor. He now is charged with raping two women and attempting to rape another.

A third kept unplugging his monitoring device and ignored warnings that he stop moving without approval. Authorities now believe he killed a 59-year-old man at a motel.

Well before parolee Evan Ebel tore off his ankle bracelet in March and allegedly killed two people, including Colorado corrections chief Tom Clements, the state's electronic-monitoring system showed signs of trouble.

A Denver Post review of parolee cases and monitoring data from October to April found that serious alerts sometimes went unheeded until it was too late, even as the system generated thousands of false and minor notifications.

Colorado's most dangerous parolees are outfitted with high-tech equipment that is supposed to keep a close watch on their whereabouts. Monitors are strapped to their ankles and receivers installed in their residences. In the most serious sex-offender cases, parolee movements are tracked by a GPS system.

But problems arise. Batteries run down. Plugs get ripped from wall sockets. The systems go dark. The Post found several cases in which parole officers responded slowly as parolees went off the grid and allegedly committed new violent crimes.

Advertisement

Ebel is suspected of killing pizza delivery driver Nathan Leon and Clements during the six days it took his parole officer to obtain an arrest warrant. Ebel was killed two days later in a shootout with authorities in Texas.

In response, Colorado called in federal officials to audit the state's electronic-monitoring program and overhauled how parole officers respond to monitor tamper alerts.

Stream of alert notifications

The case of Cameron Washington, 31, shows that troubling issues existed with the system.

Washington now is charged with raping two women — one while armed with a gun, the other while armed with a knife — and the attempted rape of another woman in November while enrolled in the intensive-supervision program.

His electronic monitor generated a steady, ongoing stream of alert notifications following his release from prison after serving a sentence for attempted burglary and trespassing.

The day he was hooked up to his electronic monitor in September, he disappeared from his motel. Officials, for the most part, responded by continually calling the motel's front desk — more than 70 telephone calls in all — even after they confirmed he was no longer staying there.

More than a month after he left the motel, officials noted he needed a new electronic monitor since the state was switching vendors, but they didn't know where he was. Nothing in the parole documents the state provided to The Post shows that the hookup actually occurred after the service to his old device stopped working — even after he spent time in the Denver jail.

Tim Hand, the state's director of parole, requested an audit by the National Institute of Corrections, a U.S. Department of Justice agency, following the Ebel case. Hand has not talked publicly since being placed on administrative leave last month, but in an interview in April, he said electronic monitoring is a challenge.

"The public thinks we put an ankle bracelet on and everything is fine, but the electronic monitoring is just a tool," Hand said. "It's better, in my view, than not having that tool, but it doesn't mean that offender can't cut it off and run away. It doesn't mean we're going to be able to control that offender's every move."

About 1,500 parolees are on intensive supervision at any one time. Their monitoring can range from curfew enforcement to devices that track their movements.

Parolee Bryan Carver, 32, was released from prison in January 2011 after serving a conviction for sex offenses and placed on GPS electronic monitoring. During a nearly three-month stretch, Carver's tracking system generated more than 100 event notifications and alerts.

Parole officers who were monitoring his Denver residence last Dec. 17 were surprised when Carver drove up in a silver Infinity. His GPS had indicated he was inside the house. Once inside, parole officials found out why. Carver had taken his tracking device off of his ankle and put it around the collar of "his little dog Nuzzie," the arrest affidavit states.

Carver had been living with another felon, underage females, a cache of ammunition, firearms including three AK-47 assault rifles, crack cocaine and meth. He now faces drug-trafficking and weapons charges.

Parolee Santos Torres, 50, kept unplugging the electronic-monitoring receiver that was supposed to monitor him after his release from prison in June 2012, records show. On Aug. 2, his parole officer warned Torres he needed to plug his monitoring system back in and needed to stop moving without approval.

The monitoring equipment started generating power failure alerts again. Torres also missed two drug tests. Eight days after warning Torres about his behavior, the parole officer visited the vacant motel room on Aug. 10 and decided the parolee had been on the lam for at least a week. He obtained an arrest warrant.

Under the state's new rules, when a tamper alert occurs, parolees will be required to stay at their residences until parole officials can visit with them. Parole officers, who previously had the discretion to respond on their own time frame, will be required to visit a parolee's home within 24 hours after a tamper alert to decide whether an arrest warrant is needed.

Officials also plan later this month to submit a $600,000-a-year plan to legislative leaders for a new parole unit to track down absconders. In the past, those roundups occurred on an ad-hoc basis using overtime payments to parole officers, with the assistance of local law enforcement. There are currently more than 800 Colorado parole absconders.

More changes could occur once the federal review is done. The audit is examining electronic monitoring to see whether parole officers are properly responding to alerts and whether the system is adequately monitoring sex offenders, gang offenders and other high-risk parolees.

The audit is comparing how Colorado compares nationally on home visits, face-to-face contacts by parole officers and overall responses to electronic-monitoring alerts.

A surge in monitoring issues occurred last year after the parole division switched to a new vendor after parole officers complained the old one provided equipment from many different companies, each requiring different training.

Records show that during the change, parolees were instructed to show up for new monitoring devices. Sometimes old equipment was lost. Other times parolees never showed up or couldn't be found for installations.

The Denver Post was able to zero in on some problem cases by reviewing alert and event data the Colorado Department of Corrections released under an open-records request. The newspaper matched the names of parolees who appeared in that data with those who appeared in jail arrest records. Case files were then reviewed for some of those individuals.

The data showed that a team of 212 parole officers had to respond to nearly 90,000 alerts and notifications generated by the electronic monitoring devices in the six months reviewed.

Carl Sagara, a past deputy director of parole and community corrections in Colorado, said he suspects that such high volume quickly can become overwhelming to parole officers.

"These guys come into the office in the morning, and they have got 30 guys on electronic monitors, and the computer has so much information on all these guys, and the parole officers just go, 'Holy smokes,' " Sagara said.

He added that some issues just aren't so easy to resolve and require difficult decisions.

If a parole officer moves to revoke the parole of an offender abusing alcohol at home, county jail officials will complain that valuable bed space is being wasted, Sagara said. The parole officer takes the blame if the parolee remains free and kills someone while driving drunk.

"There are some issues with this that are darn near impossible to manage," Sagara said.

In addition, many electronic-monitoring programs throughout the nation aren't staffed appropriately, said George Drake, a consultant who has worked on improving the systems.

"Many times when an agency is budgeted for electronic-monitoring equipment, it is only budgeted for the devices themselves," Drake said. "That is like buying a hammer and expecting a house to be built. It's simply a tool, and it requires a professional to use that tool and run the program."

He added that programs also can get out of control if officials don't develop stringent protocols for how to respond to alerts and don't manage how alerts are generated.

"I see agencies with so many alerts that they can't deal with them," Drake said. "They end up just throwing their hands up and saying they can't keep up with them."

Controversies over monitoring

Electronic-monitoring systems were developed in the 1960s. Since then, they've become a common fixture nationally in probation and parole systems — and they generate big money for the private firms that provide them.

The current vendor that supplies monitoring devices for Colorado's parole division is BI Inc., a Boulder-based company. BI was bought in 2011 by the GEO Group Inc., a $1.5 billion multinational provider of private prison beds and community corrections services.

BI, which provides electronic monitoring in every state in the nation, and its competitors have generated controversies elsewhere. In 2010, 49 states were unable to monitor the movements of offenders after BI suffered a nationwide server crash.

Last September, an audit in Tennessee found massive oversights in the state's GPS offender tracking system. The audit found that more than 80 percent of the alerts from GPS-monitored offenders "were not cleared or confirmed" by corrections officials.

In New York, probation officials have been criticized for the case of a man who is accused of disabling his BI bracelet and killing a school librarian and raping a 10-year-old girl. A federal report released in April found that 46 alerts from the monitor of the accused killer in New York were not investigated by probation officials when they should have been.

BI declined comment on that case and other specific cases in Colorado.

Closer to home, the electronic monitor on parolee Gary Rael, 32, in Pueblo kept generating alerts after his release from prison in July, but he usually had an excuse. Once, he said his children had unplugged the equipment that had been installed in a corner of his home.

On Jan. 8, Pueblo police issued an arrest warrant for Rael on suspicion that he had run over a woman's foot during the robbery of a head shop in November, records show. It wasn't until Jan. 23 that Rael's parole officer realized the warrant was pending and he arrested Rael.

One parolee's experience, taken from Colorado Department of Corrections records, illustrates problems with supervision and electronic monitoring.

Sept. 4, 2012 - Cameron Washington is released from prison on intensive-supervision parole after serving four years for attempted burglary. Homeless and unemployed, he receives vouchers to stay a week at a motel on East Colfax Avenue in Aurora.

Sept. 17 - Alerts for leaving during curfew and power failure are registered on Washington's electronic-monitoring equipment. Calls to reach him are unsuccessful.

Sept. 27 - Misses a drug test. Parole officer confirms with motel manager that the parolee left nine days earlier.

Oct. 2 - Misses another drug test. CWISE continues calling motel.

Oct. 5 - Meets with parole officer and says he has been staying at a shelter.

Oct. 9 - Again meets with his parole officer. Washington says he is now staying at a parole house.

Oct. 11 - Misses another drug test. A monitoring alert indicates he left during curfew. A motel employee tells CWISE that Washington has checked out, but it continues calling there for the next three weeks.

Oct. 14-16 - Six monitor alerts indicate Washington left during curfew. But CWISE notes offender has no set curfew.

Oct. 16 - Meets with parole officer. Says he has no excuse for missing drug tests and will try to do better.

Oct. 17-19 - Five more alerts come from Washington's monitor, for leaving during curfew and for not returning.

Nov. 1 - Shows up for drug test, which indicates possible alcohol use. CWISE reports it has been unable to locate or contact Washington to update his monitoring equipment.

Nov. 6 - Takes another drug test, which detects cocaine use.

Nov. 7 - Arrested, placed in Denver County Jail and charged with a technical parole violation. Released 12 days later.

Nov. 20 - In a meeting with parole officer, says he will stay with his mother. Does not provide her address.

Dec. 3 - Meets again with parole officer, who tells him to call with his mother's address, but he never does. Later, Aurora police call the parole officer to inform him that Washington is wanted in a sex assault. The officer calls Washington and gets the address of his mother's house, where he is arrested.

Billionaires, entertainers and athletes alike announced their intentions to pursue the Los Angeles Clippers with varying degrees of seriousness Wednesday, proving the longtime losers will be quite a prize if the NBA is able to wrest control of the team away from Donald Sterling after his lifetime ban for racist remarks. Full Story

Louie, who (like Louis) is a New York comic and a divorced father of two daughters, knows struggle and angst and cloudy wonderment. He views life through eyes with a stricken look, dwelling in a state of comfortable dread. Full Story